Quotes & Sayings About Figuring Something Out

Gratuitous redundancy makes prose difficult not just because readers have to duplicate the effort of figuring something out, but because they naturally assume that when a writer says two things she means two things, and fruitlessly search for the nonexistent second point. — Steven Pinker

You know, Uri, there's something seriously wrong with me. (Acheron)
And you're just now figuring this out? Damn, you're the poster child for slow learning. (Urian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene. — Neil Burger

I think N.Y.C. definitely had something to do with my figuring out my life path. — T. Cooper

Why not start figuring out ways to change the way we treat each other? The way we talk to each other, the way we talk about each other. To love each other. You know it starts off with self-love. We have to love ourselves before we can love anybody else.

And the media from day one, from when you were little ass kids, they teach you not to love yourself. They take something out of you and they try to sell it back to you...Something that you've been fighting for your entire life that's taken from you as a child. That you always had inside of you. That's self-love.

That's why I love you so much, cause as everybody knows, I love me so much. — Kanye West

You travel with the hope that something unexpected will happen. It has to do with enjoying being lost and figuring it out and the satisfaction. I always get a little disappointed when I know too well where I'm going, or when I've lived in a place so long that there's no chance I could possibly get lost. — Andrew Bird

When you give me something that I love, then I spend a long time drilling down on it and figuring out what it is I love about it. — Mark Waid

Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math. — Rachel Maddow

If the cost of figuring out whether to do something is more than just doing it, then just do it! — Joichi Ito

By figuring out how the experience can help you move forward. That's the point of why it happened to you in the first place. There's something you're suppose to get from the moment that'll get you closer to your mission if you can see it. Most people can't. — Daniel Black

Reading something for the first time and getting this feeling like the material provokes you on some level, and doing the movie is really just sort of defining and figuring out why exactly you felt certain things when you read it. — Kristen Stewart

Life is perphas after all simply this thing and then the next. We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction. We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is perculiar and inexplicable. We are constanly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy, but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once- and we have to start over again, feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment. — Anne Giardini

And I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn't mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something
David Foster Wallace — David Lipsky

Your life AFTER Christ is not static or an end result. You are not suspended in grace above the fray of life. You are looking at God through a kaleidoscope. Your life moves, and the beads shift, and something new emerges. You are defining. Redefining. Figuring it out all over again. You are in motion, in transit, in flux. You will be sad. You will be happy. You will love and doubt and cry and rage, and all of it matters. You are human, and you are beloved, and this is what it is to be Alive. — Addie Zierman

This figuring-out step is crucial, since overly optimistic economic models have often assumed that demand and incentives are enough to stimulate the production of any product. Incentives work to motivate intermediaries and traders, but makers, who are the ones that provide the substance of what is traded, need more than an incentive to make something. They need to know how to do it. — Cesar Hidalgo

We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it. "Can you turn that off?" he asked. "Sure," I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record. "So. Do you have a friend, Kim?" Sharif asked. I was unsure what he meant. "I have a lot of friends," I replied. "No. Do you have a friend?" I figured it out. "You mean a boyfriend?" "Yes." I looked at Sharif. I had two options - lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth. — Kim Barker

Doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later. — Robert A. Heinlein

For most developers, that kind of situation - a player figuring out how to do something that the designer didn't intend - to most developers, that's a bug. For me, that's a celebration. — Warren Spector

The Colorman slid off the morgue slab to the cold floor. Bullets pooped from his wounds and plopped on the stone as he limped naked around the room looking for something to wear. All the dead were either naked, too ripe, or too tall for him to use their clothes, so he settled on a white mortician's coat that trailed out behind him as he went. The morgue attendant pretended not to see him as he passed, figuring that a spontaneous reanimation would require paperwork that he did not wish to fill out. — Christopher Moore

I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally. I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make something work for all people. — Bill Richardson

I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, 'I worked really, really hard in my 20s.' And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more. — Steve Jobs

The eternal challenge for screenwriter adapters is figuring out how to make something work on screen, when so much of what made it work in the book were the thoughts of the character, and obviously wanting to avoid voiceover. — David Benioff

When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality. — Karen Russell

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which. — Jodi Picoult

But real-world questions aren't like word problems. A real-world problem is something like "Has the recession and its aftermath been especially bad for women in the workforce, and if so, to what extent is this the result of Obama administration policies?" Your calculator doesn't have a button for this. Because in order to give a sensible answer, you need to know more than just numbers. What shape do the job-loss curves for men and women have in a typical recession? Was this recession notably different in that respect? What kind of jobs are disproportionately held by women, and what decisions has Obama made that affect that sector of the economy? It's only after you've started to formulate these questions that you take out the calculator. But at that point the real mental work is already finished. Dividing one number by another is mere computation; figuring out what you should divide by what is mathematics. — Jordan Ellenberg

What's the fun in approaching something closed-minded? I'm very specific; if dialogue is too on-the-nose, or there's a lot of telling and not showing, I'll talk to my manager and let them know the problems I have with it. But, I always go in with fresh eyes. The first pass just needs to be about figuring out little things here and there. — Will Rothhaar

I almost literally wake up in the morning starting to think of my next idea. It's almost always driven by what's in the news. The hard part, really, is getting from knowing what I want to say to figuring out how to say it in an image. I'm still not entirely sure how to explain how that happens ... Suddenly, something just works. — David Horsey

In a world in which most investors appear interested in figuring out how to make money every second and chase the idea du jour, there's also something validating about the message that it's okay to do nothing and wait for opportunities to present themselves or to pay off. That's lonely and contrary a lot of the time, but reminding yourself that that's what it takes is quite helpful. — Seth Klarman

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with. — Josie Maran

Mai grins at Mycroft. 'You know that's slightly ridiculous, don't you?'
He smiled. 'Why?'
'Because. . . because you're teenagers.' Mai's expression says it should be obvious. 'Mycroft, this isn't like figuring out who spray-painted some guy's car. This is murder.'
'The principles are the same' he insists.
'But you're both minors. And you have no access to police information, no experience, no forensics lab, no authority. . . '
'Mai, are you trying to bring me down or something?'
Gus, who usually only gets emotive about things like soccer, suddenly leans forward. 'I think you should do it.' He glances at me and Mycroft in turn. 'This homeless guy, it's not like his death is going to be a major priority, is it? The police won't bend over backwards to bring his killer to justice or anything. He was a derelict with no family. So you two are the only ones who even care. — Ellie Marney

And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character. — Elizabeth Olsen

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. — Charlie Kaufman

Sometimes I overtinker, which is something wrong with my brain chemistry. But in figuring out why I do that, maybe I'll make myself a better person. I doubt it. — John Goodman

I work with a group of actors, and whenever one of us has an audition, we all get together, and we all work together on it. I think it takes us back to our film school days, our drama school days, us just working together and figuring it out because somebody else is going to see something in the material that you won't see. — Omar Dorsey

Trying to use all the existing technologies that were out there wouldn't work for us because none of them were flexible. Everything was rigid in some way, so we had to go on a manhunt, essentially for something that was a viable technology. So it was a good four-months of just designing and figuring out the lights. — Christine Bieselin Clark

Tatiana sat on the bench by the bay, by the morning water, and watched her son push himself on a tire swing. Her arms were twisted around her stomach. She was trying not to rock like Alexander rocked at three o'clock in the morning. Has he left me? Did he kiss my hand and go? No. It wasn't possible. Something's happened. He can't cope, can't make it, can't find a way out, a way in. I know it. I feel it. We thought the hard part was over - but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you're all busted up inside and out - there is nothing harder. Oh dear God. Where is Alexander? — Paullina Simons

This isn't about convincing you whether or not there is a God. I believe God and the Universe exists. If you don't believe there is a greater force, then surely you believe that something inside of us and is in the driver's seat. In other words, something is driving us towards figuring out how to master happiness, peace, love, and understanding psychopaths, murderers and Taylor Swift fans. — Sadiqua Hamdan

If a guy is skilled at anything, that's attractive. There's something very primal about that and, sure, it can be as simple as figuring out the tip quickly. It's really cool when a guy tips 20 percent quickly and effortlessly so that when the check comes, he opens it and signs his name and done. — Danica McKellar

I like to discover little treasures in the cities we are in like a really amazing restaurant. I will go on my own and enjoy figuring out the ingredients as if I were making it at home, then I share my finds on my socials. I find that these little adventures bring me peace, because it is something I do when I am home. — Noelle Scaggs

The best way to make change is to know how something works. If you're going to go build something or change whatever it is, if you don't know how it works and you're trying to go make a change in it, the first thing you're doing is you're spending time figuring out how it works. The same thing happens in organizations. — Brian Krzanich

I looked down at my chest, figuring there had to be a bullet hole. Or an arrow sticking out. Something to explain the pain. But then I realized it was just my heart. Breaking. — A&E Kirk

Over time I've learned, surprisingly, that it's tremendously hard to get teams to be super ambitious. It turns out most people haven't been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what's actually possible. It's why we've put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you'll usually get there. And even if you fail, you'll probably learn something important. It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. — Eric Schmidt

I had to figure out my own faith. That was something I figured out a while ago when I was 18. But I can always stand on the fact that my dad has been a great example for me. Beyond that, building my career hasn't been attached to my dad. It's been me figuring things out for myself. — Anthony Evans

You are figuring out how to produce a result that you desire in your life. You are not thinking about losing something or maintaining the status quo. You are working to move your life forward from where it is now, making it better than what it is today, considering how you desire your life to be - and that's exciting! Gain gives you focus, a direction to head toward. — Steve McClatchy

I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it. — Damon Albarn

I think that most people will spend their whole life not figuring out what they're meant to do, or figuring out what they're meant to do on their way to do something else. So I just feel lucky that I know what I love to do. Everything else figures itself out. — Andy Kindler

In this case, Jane and Maura don't always agree on how to go about solving something. They both are very different in their approach and, a lot of times, that can lead to potential conflict, and then a debate in figuring out who and what is the right way to do it. — Sasha Alexander

The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Any time you add something to your game, you still have to find ways to improve, so I'm still studying the game and trying to find out ways to increase how we use me on the floor. You're not being complacent, not falling back and floating around the perimeter too much, figuring out when to attack. I'm trying to find that balance between attacking and spotting up and things like that. — Blake Griffin

No one has it all figured out, especially not the people who are acting like they do and judging you because of it. Pretending to be something you aren't because you're trying to please a bunch of judgmental hypocrites and shitheads is not the way to be happy. Living the life you want to live is. It really is that simple. — Tucker Max

It's puzzling to me that so many self-help gurus urge people to visualize victory, and stop there. Some even insist that if you wish for good things long enough and hard enough, you'll get them - and, conversely, that if you focus on the negative, you actually invite bad things to happen. Why make yourself miserable worrying? Why waste time getting ready for disasters that may never happen? Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn't a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it's true that you may wind up getting ready for something that never happens, if the stages are at all high, it's worth it. — Chris Hadfield